So if you have me on twitter you will know that this happened.
But if you don’t (unsurprising) or you don’t remember/don’t want to read the link (also unsurprising) A quick summary:
I had a discussion with my Principal as part of the ‘settling in’ process and we got onto the subject of PD; I waxed lyrical about blogging, twitter and #GlobalMath and he asked me to present about it to the Governors of the school
After getting a bunch of positive feedback from my Tweeps(*smile*) I decided to go for it and put this together:
A quick overview of what I said:
Slide one – brief outline of what I want to tell them about
Slide two – How I got into the maths blogosphere, and an example of what I have stolen from all those people in the top list, and then said that all the people below had given me or helped me with something
Slide three – I talked about my blog and what I use it for
Slide four – I expanded on each of these points, why they are important and what they’ve meant to me as a professional
Slide five – Where I would send people who want to be involved – Sam’s AWESOME SITE
Slide six to eight – why twitter is important (particularly the community slide)
Slide nine – About Global math – the hidden bullet points are:
- Started last year
- Weekly online conference session (possibly the worlds longest running conference)
- Favourite lesson/support/classroom ideas
- Pedagogical discussion
- Worldwide participation
- PD that participants want and contribute to
Slide ten – An outline of the UK scene
Slide eleven – A conclusion
Slide twelve – A nod to #TMC13
I took a couple of questions about sharing with my department and the expected ‘inappropriate contact with students outside of school – what happens if they follow you on Twitter?!’
I will be following this up with my department with a slightly different presentation (more content, less twitter) and I’ll blog about that as well.
Maths is Not a Spectator Sport 
Very cool. It’s interesting that you find the UK scene has worse etiquette. The only person I can remember cursing at me for a tweet was from the UK (mind you, my sample size is 1 tweet from 1 person). They are also one of the few teachers I’ve blocked. How have you observed this though? What makes the culture different if this happens?
I worked in the UK for 2 fabulous years, and I have many UK teacher friends as a result. I didn’t notice them being uncouth or rude at all.
David – I might need to add an explanation to the post above about that – I don’t mean abuse or cursing; to be honest that probably wouldn’t bother me unless it was excessive. I was more thinking (and said so in the presentation) that a lot of the first people I found from the UK I had to unfollow because my feed was constantly filled with excessive retweets of the same links, and constant repetition of the same opinions about government. In the last few days – literally since I gave the presentation – I have discovered a LOT more maths professionals who don’t do that.
So I think I may have qualify that with:
“When I wrote the presentation my experience of the UK twitter scene was very much of a vocal minority – I have since discovered that there is a quieter, more polite minority who are much much better”
Thanks for the comment!
I’ll just steal your set of slides when I present mine. UK tweeps have less etiquette? Well, that explains THAT.
“What happens if they follow you on Twitter?” None of my students have, although a few have asked me to be “friends” on Facebook. I think I’d just say to all my students, “Would you follow your mother on Twitter if she had an account?”
I thank you, Nik, for including me in Slide 2 there!
Feel free to steal whatever you like Fawn, I steal so much from you it’s only fair. It explains a lot right? =)
Had to include you!
Love the Pi Pie. That was a cool weekend. I think that was the first time I added you to twitter! We’ve had awesome conversation since then (feel like I’m giving a speech at a wedding). I have had twitter, but I didn’t really get seriously into it until that weekend, so that was actually quite significant for me.
In any case, I am curious to see what you did with this question:
“inappropriate contact with students outside of school – what happens if they follow you on Twitter?!”
I’m glad the talk went well!
Jim! It was a cool time, I’m glad you had as much fun as I did with that.
In terms of the question about contact with students I pointed out that 1) Why would a student bother? 2) I don’t have to follow them back. 3) I’ve had the facebook discussion with students before when they tried.
People seemed ok with that, especially when I pointed out I feel like any conversation on twitter is about as private as one had in a local pub!
Have you been asked a similar question at all?
So, apart from States and UK, what’s your opinion on Canadian tweeters? I linked here through one. 😀 As far as students following me on Twitter goes, I’ve had it happen, but I usually find they unfollow within a few weeks because I’m not that interesting. Just something I keep in the back of my mind.
Hah, States == American Colonies 😉 Canadian is fine! Thanks for the shared experience!
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